


Civil Conversations (in Uncivil Times)

by Innwich



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Blood and Gore, Christmas, Historical References, M/M, Secret Relationship, Smissmas, Spy's Head, Vietnam War, WAR! Update, cross-faction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-10 04:57:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5571910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innwich/pseuds/Innwich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Soldier declared war on the enemy Demoman on one December morning, Spy fought to capture the frigid desert of Dustbowl with his team, while a war of a different sort was raging outside the country.</p><p>AKA An anti-war fic about a war-themed hat simulator.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

“Incoming!”

An alarm was blaring over the base.

The sun had set a few hours ago, but it was sweltering in the laboratory. The thick concrete walls had trapped the desert heat of Badwater Basin inside the base. His face itched under the balaclava. The balaclava was growing stiff with Spy’s sweat and the fabric was scratching at his cheeks. A fan was whirling lazily slow next to him on the desk. Spy would have called it a twisted form of torture if the fan hadn’t been angled carefully to not blow cigarette smoke back into his face.

A note written by the RED Medic was lying under him on the desk. Out of boredom and professional compulsion, Spy tried to decipher the information written on it, but it was too close to his face for him to make out the words. There was a dark blotch smeared on the far corner of the wall, but Spy couldn’t look at it without tipping himself over on the desk. The scent of antiseptics didn’t cover the heavy smell of blood that hung over the laboratory.

Something exploded outside the base. If Spy had to guess, he’d say someone was bombarding the front of the base with rockets. Not that he could do anything about it if the roof of the laboratory crashed down on him. He was a living, severed head with nothing below his neck other than a thick mechanical plate that was powered by a large battery pack. But then again, there were worse places to be on the desk of the mad doctor that had cut off his head.

Spy had, after all, attempted to kill him.

A dove landed on a desk lamp with a flutter of wings. It watched Spy with its beady eyes. Spy blew a smoke ring at the bird, which hopped down from its perch and cocked its head, staring at Spy.

Spy didn’t like the look in its eyes. “Leave me alone, you diseased animal.”

“Archimedes, don’t touch him,” the RED Medic said, bustling into the laboratory. He wasn’t wearing his coat or gloves, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. “And don’t feed him, _bitte_. He is only a head. He doesn’t have a digestive system. The food will get on my papers.”

Spy ignored the RED Medic’s ramblings. The doctor made little sense when it came to his pet birds. Spy said, “What is happening?”

“Well, your teammates are attacking us,” Medic said. He pulled a white sheet off the experimental medi-gun lying on a workbench.

Spy raised an eyebrow. The fights between the two teams always took place in the day in Badwater Basin, unlike the nocturnal battles that they had fought in Double Cross. “Now? In the middle of the night?”

“Exciting, isn’t it?” Medic said gleefully. He strapped the medi-pack onto his back. Spy was still holding out on the hope that the medi-pack would explode on Medic on the battlefield one day. Medic peered down at the medi-gun nozzle in his hands. The nozzle was barely held together by tape, and it wasn’t connected to the medi-pack. “Hm, the hose is missing.”

The RED Heavy lumbered past the door of the laboratory, lugging a minigun in his arms and carrying a belt of ammunition over his shoulder. He was barefoot and wearing red pajamas covered in a pattern of tiny skulls and crossbones; he must have been awakened by the alarm. He shouted, “Doctor, we have fight.”

“ _Ja_ , I’m coming!” Medic said. He looked under a metal sink. “Where did I put the hose?”

It was mildly amusing to see Medic tug drawers and cabinets open to look for the hose, so Spy stayed quiet and contented himself with watching Medic struggle.

Eventually, Medic pulled open the cupboard next to the windows. The hose fell out like a snake from between heavy glass jars of pickled food that were packed within the cupboard, and nearly knocked over a jar that had carrots floating in it. Medic beamed. “Ah ha!”

Spy rolled his eyes, but it was lost on Medic, who was connecting the hose to his medi-pack.

“Give us back our man, you cheating maggots!” someone yelled from outside the base.

“Ah, so they finally realize you’re missing,” Medic said. The medi-gun switched on with a low hum.

“I wonder why,” Spy said. “It couldn’t be because you were turning your teammates invulnerable with the medi-gun on the battlefield.”

“Ach, it’s the invention of the century! It blurs the line between man and God,” Medic crowed, “and it wouldn’t have been possible without your help, my friend. We should work together more often!”

“Let me think. I’d be delighted,” Spy said. “Not.”

Medic chuckled. He lit a cigarette and held it up to Spy’s mouth. Spy dropped the stick of ashes that his cigarette had burnt down to, and took the newly lit cigarette from Medic. Medic said, “I have to go, but I’ll be back before you know it!”

“I won’t hold my breath,” Spy said drily.

Outside the base, the tell-tale beeps of a sentry gun joined the rapid gunfire of the RED Heavy’s minigun. Screams and shouts of pain faded into the distance. The fight was moving farther away from the base.

Spy smoked. The doves fluttering around the laboratory were making him rethink his decision to move out of the fridge. He’d seen those flying rats dive-bombing the tiled floor with white splatters of shit. Maybe he’d ask Medic to move him back into the fridge. At least it’d be cool in there.

The door slammed open, startling a couple of doves into taking flight. Scout was standing in the doorway and holding his scattergun. When he spotted Spy’s head on the desk, his jaw dropped. He reminded Spy of a goldfish, with his goggling eyes, gaping mouth, and few signs of intelligence. “Holy crap.”

“Scout,” Spy said irritably, “get me out of here. Now.”

“Oh God, you can talk?” Scout approached Spy slowly, as if being turned into a severed head was an infectious condition. “This is so messed up.”

“Scout!”

When Medic returned to the lab, he found an empty desk and that the blueprint for the medi-gun was missing, and Spy would be cradled in Scout’s sweaty arms and half-way back to the infirmary in his own base to be reattached to his body.


	2. Day 1: WAR! Bloody Thursday

The sweet smell of bacon was always good to wake up in the morning to. Spy stifled a yawn. The base was quiet, but Engineer was already cooking in the kitchen. He was wearing his apron over his overalls, which seemed redundant to Spy. Surprisingly, Soldier had joined Engineer at the stove, but didn’t appear to be cooking; he had his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“I heard you the first two times you said it, son,” Engineer said shortly.

“I don’t think so, cupcake, not over the sound of that sizzling fat,” Soldier said. “So I’m going to repeat myself again!”

Engineer had pushed up his goggles to his forehead, but his brows were knitted, and his mouth was pinched in a tight line. Spy recognized that look. It was the look of a man who was about to have had enough and let everyone’s breakfast burn in the frying pan.

“Can’t you bother the laborer after he’s done with breakfast?” Spy said.

Soldier rounded on him. “Spy! You’re just in time. I have news for you!”

Behind Soldier, Engineer breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

“I’m declaring war on the RED Demoman!” Soldier said.

Spy nearly dropped his cigarette. “War?”

“Yes! A war! It will take seven days!” Soldier said. “I have to kill him as many times as I can!”

For the last few months, Soldier had taken to spending his weekends with his ‘new best friend in the whole wide world’. He’d come back with souvenirs and photos taken at landmarks in other states. He’d refused to say who his mystery friend had been, and the team had made it a challenge to get a name out of Soldier. In the end, it’d been only a matter of catching Soldier by surprise and getting him to let slip his friend’s identity before his mind had caught up with his mouth. The team had lost interest in Soldier’s new friendship after that, though Scout had insisted that Soldier had had himself a hot date.

To hear Soldier said he was declaring he’d be warring with the RED Demoman was surprising, to say the least.

“But aren’t you friends with him?” Spy said.

Which was apparently the wrong thing to ask, because Soldier turned an angry shade of red under his helmet and prodded Spy in the chest with a thick finger. Soldier crowded Spy against the kitchen table and snarled in Spy’s face, “He is no friend of mine!”

“So you two have a disagreement,” Engineer said, and flipped a pancake. “Doesn’t explain why you’re doing this.”

“He’s a back-stabbing Judas!” Soldier yelled. Engineer wiped off the spit that had landed on his own face. Soldier continued with a low growl, curling his hands into fists, “And there will be a secret weapon for whoever wins the war, and, by God, I will pry it out of his hands if I have to!”

Spy sighed. This was getting ridiculous, and it was too early in the morning for him to indulge Soldier’s flights of fancy. “What secret weapon?”

“It’s a secret!” Soldier screamed. “And you won’t get any intel out of me because I don’t know what it is either!”

There was no news that indicated Mann Co. was selling any secret weapon to them or the public, and Spy had read every weapon and hat catalogue that Mann Co. had published. Either the secret weapon was a product of Soldier’s vivid hallucinations, or it was, well, a secret. Realizing he’d come to the same conclusion as Soldier had, Spy frowned and mentally filed the matter away for later investigation. Secrets tended not to stay secrets for long between the two bases.

Soldier perked up at the sound of someone in the hallway. He saluted Spy and Engineer and said, “At ease, men!” Then he ran out of the kitchen. “Halt, maggot!”

“Dude, what the hell? Can’t a guy go and take a piss without being harassed in the morning?” Scout said.

“I’ve got some news for you, buttercup! You listen to me, and you listen good!”

“Here, partner. Think we both could use some of this.” Engineer handed Spy his plate of breakfast.

“Many thanks,” Spy said, and tucked into his breakfast. The buttery smell of pork sausages and scrambled eggs cheered him up considerably after Soldier’s abrupt disruption to his morning routine. He drenched his pancakes in maple syrup until they were dripping with fat and decadence. If there were one thing he’d miss from this job, it’d be the breakfast. Engineer’s cooking had spoiled him for simple croissants in the morning.

Scout wandered into the kitchen. Soldier had stopped talking in the hallway and had moved on to yelling about his war at Heavy in the rec room.

“What was that about?” Scout poured himself a glass of orange juice

“Hell if I know,” Engineer said, plating the remaining food in the frying pan. “I’d expect them to roughhouse for a bit before they kiss and make up again.

  


* * *

  


It turned out that Soldier and the RED Demoman were serious about the war.

It was a cold morning in Dustbowl. Scout and Heavy had captured the first control point, but their attack was stalled in front of the tunnels that led to the second control point. The entrances of the tunnels were heavily bombed. Soldier was firing rockets at the RED Demoman and dodging stickybombs bursting in his face, while the two screamed abuses at each other. Spy had died more than a few times to stray grenades when he’d attempted to enter the tunnels.

Spy focused on harassing the RED Engineer and sapping his buildings before they did much damage to his team. Eventually, Scout saw him shooting at the RED Engineer and decided it was more fun than chasing the RED Sniper into the tunnels. Scout was apparently annoying enough to make the RED Engineer call the RED Pyro over to set them both on fire. Scout reached the closest health pack faster than Spy, and Spy had to run back to respawn to extinguish the flames on his back.

The team was racking up kills, but they couldn’t get through the tunnels to capture the second control point. Their attack was as disorganized the RED’s defenses. Demoman and the RED Soldier had run out of ammo, and were running circles around each other, trying to hit the other man with their beer bottle and shovel respectively. With no one else providing heavy artillery fire, Heavy started shooting at anything that came out of the tunnels, the REDs gave up on defending the tunnels, but they retreated and had their own Heavy and Sniper camping the other ends of the tunnels.

It was, in essence, a stalemate, but it meant the REDs had successfully defended their point, and Spy was treated to an unpleasant humiliation round when the battle ended. He hid on the roof of a shed, until the RED Sniper came to stab him to death.

  


* * *

  


The news was playing on the television, showing an interview with a soldier on a base in Vietnam. Demoman was lounging on the couch and downing another bottle of scrumpy. He was half-way through the case.

“Make your move, I double-dare you. I’d triple-dare you but then you’d wet your pants and I’m on laundry duty so I prefer you don’t do that,” Scout said. He was bouncing his leg under the table. It was making the chessboard shake. “I ain’t got all day.”

Spy gritted his teeth. “Then stop talking like a jackhammer in my ear. I can’t hear myself think.”

“Nah, it’s part of my strategy. It’s what I do. I distract people before I kill them off for good.” Scout picked up the black queen he’d captured and wiggled it in Spy’s face. “Look, it’s working already!”

Spy wanted to wring his neck. “Must we listen to those insipid news reports every night?”

“Ye won’t see anything else on at this hour,” Demoman said. “All the channels are doing the news.”

“Fellas,” Engineer said from the doorway. He was holding a shotgun and followed by Pyro. Pyro pointed a flamethrower at each of them in the rec room menacingly.

“Whoa, no one tells me we’re fighting the REDs tonight,” Scout said.

“Tell me, did any of y’all notice strange noises in the base tonight? Doors opening and closing by themselves?” Engineer said.

“Are you saying the base is haunted?” Scout said. “‘Cause that’d explain a whole lotta things. Like how the showers are cold all the freaking time, at four in the morning and afternoon and evening.”

“The only thing haunted ‘round here is me bloody eye,” Demoman muttered.

“It ain’t no ghost,” Engineer said. “Whatever I bumped into was as solid as you and me.”

“You’re just being paranoia,” Spy said.

“Yeah!” Scout said. “‘Sides, what’s a Spy want with us after hours?”

“I know what I saw, and I’ll find that son of a gun if it takes me all night,” Engineer said. “C’mon, Pyro. We’ll see if there are any rats creeping around the lab.”

Spy forfeited, and left the rec room before he had to listen to Scout bragging about how amazing he was at chess, amongst other things.

When Spy unlocked his door, he found the lights were switched on in his smoking room. There was a pile of scattered documents and blueprints on his desk that hadn’t been there when he’d left the room in the morning. A fire was burning low in the fireplace. At least the RED Medic had the good sense to light the fire in this weather.

“You’re getting sloppy. Engineer knows you’re here.” Spy tucked his magazine under his arm and locked the door behind him.

“I didn’t see him coming around the corner. Don’t worry about it,” the RED Medic said. He was unpacking pieces of plastic and scrap metal from a red briefcase. He set aside a long rubber hose. “It won’t happen again.”

“Change up the routes you take, at least,” Spy said. “I don’t want to answer awkward questions if they find you with a copy of my key.”

“ _Ja, ja_ ,” Medic said absently.

Two birds trilled from atop the mantelpiece.

“You’ve brought your carpet bombers. How charming,” Spy said flatly.

“Archimedes is dying to see you,” Medic said, without looking up from the bobs and bits he was piecing together.

Spy doubted that. The bird was giving him the evil eye from across the room. “It’ll die a slow death in the fire if I find bird droppings on my carpet.”

“They’re housetrained,” Medic said, waving his complaints away with a careless hand. “Enough about the birds. Before we start, how are you today?”

“I’ve died far too many times, no thanks to your Demo,” Spy said, settling himself in his armchair. “I presume you’ve heard about the war he’s having with our Soldier?”

“Oh yes, Demo has drunk himself to a stupor. You should hear him ranting about the war!” Medic laughed. “He’s sleeping it off in my infirmary, but he may be choking on his vomit as we speak.”

Spy had heard too many comments in the same vein from Medic to be fazed by his utter lack of regards for his patients. “Did he mention anything about a secret weapon?”

Medic rubbed his chin. “He’s mentioned a weapon that he has to win in this war, but he doesn’t know what it is.”

“Did he now? Interesting,” Spy said. Soldier might not be as delusional as Spy had thought. If the weapon was worth tearing apart a friendship built on something more than mutual drunkenness, then the weapon might very well turn the tide of battles for the victor. Spy picked up his magazine, put his feet up on a pouffe, and pulled out his disguise kit. “So, doctor, shall we begin with the experiment?”


	3. Day 2: Artsy Friday

The Propaganda Contest

Spy looked down the rest of the hallway.

It was too early in the morning for this.

For some reason, crude drawings of stick figures dying from various mortal wounds were pasted on every wall and door in the hallway. The door to Spy’s room was not exempted from the artistic horror. Spy took down the drawings on his door, and found sticky residues left behind by the scotch tapes. The sticky residues formed small, yellowish squares on the white paint of his door.

Wonderful.

When Spy reached the kitchen, Engineer and Scout were already seated at the kitchen table. Engineer had cleared away his plate and Scout was chewing on a sausage noisily. Pyro was sitting on the floor, folding paper planes out of newspapers. Spy inched carefully around Pyro and grabbed his plate of breakfast from the kitchen counter where Engineer had put away the cooked food for the men that hadn’t woken up yet.

“I reckon he’s put them up in every room by now,” Engineer said from behind the newspapers he was reading.

“He taped them on my freaking Red Sox poster,” Scout said with a mouthful of chewed pork. Spy was repulsed by the sight as he sat down at the table across from Scout. Scout continued, “Do you know how much time it took me to get it signed by the guys on the team? It’d have worth millions when they’re all dead! Now it’s ruined.”

“That’s what you get for not locking your door,” Engineer said. “I’ve told you, ain’t nothing sacred in a base full of men killing other men for money.”

Pyro mumbled an agreement and flew a newspaper plane into the window.

The front door closed with a slam. A cold draft drifted into the kitchen, as Heavy walked in in a short-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of pajamas pants. He also appeared to be carrying an armful of crumpled paper balls.

“Found these outside.” Heavy dumped the paper balls onto the kitchen table. The paper balls rolled in every direction and Scout yelped in protest. Heavy said, “Little men asked if we were recruiting. I said no.”

Spy smoothed out a paper ball that had come to rest next to his elbow. It was a drawing of a stick figure wearing a semi-circle over its head. Scribbled under the drawing were the words: _Jon the war! For Amurica!_

“Like we don’t have enough troubles,” Heavy grumbled, sitting down at the table.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Engineer said. “Take a look at this.”

Engineer was holding up his newspapers. On the front page, was the headline _Dustbowl Deathmatch_ and a photo of Soldier standing in a puddle of suspiciously human bits and hammering his chest like a helmeted gorilla. Under the headline, Saxton Hale was quoted as saying that the shareholders of Mann Co. could be expecting a bonus next year.

“The kill counts are getting ridiculous,” Engineer said. “And it’s only been the first day of their war.”

“They have newspapers counting how many times they’ve killed each other?” Spy said.

“And it’s not just this one papers either,” Engineer said. “All the papers are doing it.”

“As if there aren’t enough war in the news,” Spy said.

“Funny you should say that. I can’t find the reports on ‘Nam after they’ve shuffled the pages. I don’t know if they’ve moved it or plain left it out.” But then Engineer was distracted by a paper plane flying over his head. When he spotted Pyro sitting on the floor surrounded by planes made out of newspapers pages, he exclaimed, “Pyro!”

“Mmmph mmm?”

  


* * *

  


The fight was going worse than yesterday’s match.

After the end of yesterday’s battle, the first capture point had reverted back to the REDs. It was a So far, no BLU had managed to reach the first capture point to recapture it; they were too busy being slaughtered outside their respawn room.

Rockets and bullets were fired through the open gates into the respawn room, and pieces of shrapnel were ricocheting off the walls. Spy was certain that the RED Heavy and Soldier were firing at them on the roof of the shed right outside the gates, but he couldn’t check without being shredded into pieces.

Engineer ran back into the respawn room. His sentry gun exploded behind him before it’d finished unfolding from its toolbox.

Spy didn’t acknowledge him as Spy rummaged in his locker for his Dead Ringer. He hadn’t expected Engineer to be able to set up a sentry gun and push back the REDs; Engineer should know better than to think it’d work. Spy had tried leaving respawn through the gate farthest from the capture point. It was usually the least guarded by the REDs, but he’d been mowed down by a barrage of rockets as soon as he stepped foot outside. The RED Pyro was guarding the gates of the respawn room with a flamethrower. Spy would be lit on fire even if he tried to get out of respawn while cloaked. Maybe he had to try another tactic.

“We got a right mess on our hands.” Engineer wiped blood off of his forehead. He grabbed a new pack of metal from the resupply cabinet, before the cabinet was peppered with bullets fired from outside respawn.

“You’re telling me, mate,” Sniper said. He was taking cover behind a wall next to the gate, and eyeing a red laser dot that was tracing the inner walls of the respawn. “I can’t get a clear shot at their Heavy from here.”

“Dude, Spy, can’t you take out those guys so we can get out of here?” Scout said.

“I’m working on it,” Spy said shortly, shifting through the knives in his box of weapons. His Dead Ringer must be in it somewhere.

“How’s the charge going, doc?” Engineer said to Medic.

“Give me another moment.”

“Bad news: The big guy just took an arrow to the head,” Sniper said. “Won’t be seeing him for a while.”

“Dagnabbit,” Engineer said. “We need someone to take the Übercharge and it ain’t gonna be me if we want to push past that dang sentry.”

“Don’t look at me,” Spy said. His hand snagged the golden chain of his Dead Ringer. Aha. “But I can provide a distraction, at best.”

“Who do we have left out there?” Engineer said.

“Demo is dead. Picked off by their Sniper. Pyro too. Soldier is God-knows-where. Probably chasing their Demo like a dog chases its own tail,” Sniper said.

“Alright, someone finds Soldier and tells him to get back here to get Übercharged,” Engineer said.

“I’m on it!” Scout said and ran out of the gate. A puff of flame outside the gate followed him.

Spy swore under his breath and activated his Dead Ringer. His Dead Ringer was triggered as soon as the RED Pyro burnt his arm. A copy of his corpse dropped onto the ground behind him, and the RED Pyro taunted over it. Cloaked, Spy crept towards the shack that housed the first control point. He reached it in time to see Scout being blasted out of the shack by rockets.

So the RED Engineer had built a sentry gun next to the control point. The man was probably crouching behind the sentry gun with a dispenser next to him. It’d be impossible to backstab him. Spy would have to lure him out to kill him.

The RED Engineer was a creature of habit. Spy circled around the shack, slipped past the RED Sniper, and found the faint red glow of a teleporter flickering behind the building.

As expected.

Spy disguised as his RED counterpart and decloaked. He knelt down and sapped the teleporter exit.

“Spy sapping my teleporter!” the RED Engineer yelled angrily from inside the shack.

Spy readied his knife. But the smell of propane was the only warning Spy got before he was engulfed in flames. Spy screamed as blisters formed and popped on his back, and his suit melted into his skin.

By the time the battle ended, they’d failed to even capture the first control point. Soldier had spent most of his time respawning and chasing the RED Demoman into the tunnels behind the first control point. He’d never tried to capture the point or kill the rest of the RED team. Their employer kindly reminded them all that they had made fools of themselves and were a great disappointment to her, before switching off the microphone for the day.

“Soldier, can I talk to you for a minute?” Engineer said, as Spy followed his disgruntled teammates out of the locker room.

“I’m always happy to talk to my men!” Soldier said.

  


* * *

  


A man would go to desperate lengths to find intelligent conversations in the desert.

At least that was how Spy rationalized hosting these nightly science meetings in his smoking room. It was rare that anyone sought him out for conversation, and had been alarming when the RED Medic had climbed out of his vent to enlist his help with the malfunctioning medi-gun prototype.

The medi-gun prototype which they were still working on tonight.

The newspaper Spy had finished reading an hour ago was folded on an armrest of his chair, and Spy was struggling to stay awake as he bathed in the warm red glow of the medi-gun prototype that Medic was aiming at him. He was wearing the disguise of Medic himself, just to be defiant, but the novelty had worn off after he’d gotten a few chuckles from the doctor.

The prototype’s invulnerability function had shorted out after the first time that the Übercharge had been deployed. Fumes were leaking out of the prototype, but considering that the main component of the prototype was a blender jammed onto a lever mechanism, and was mostly held together by tape and glue and sheer stubbornness, it was a wonder that it was working at all.

“I’m charged!” Medic announced, and cranked the lever.

The medi-gun prototype crackled with red light, before it switched itself off with a low whine.

“How is it not working? It must work,” Medic said, dropping the prototype onto the desk with a clatter. He rifled through his documents, and rattled off calculations and formulae that might as well have been in Greek for how little Spy could understand.

Spy never thought of himself as a dull man. He could imitate the voice of anyone in the world. He’d fooled many criminals, politicians and spies. He’d like to think he had something a little more than street smarts, but he could never manage to follow Medic’s wild leaps of logic and technical lingo. His attention drifted to the radio on his mantelpiece. One of Medic’s doves was preening its wings on top of the radio. The radio was reporting the movement of American troops in Vietnam and the bombardment of a village.

It was times like this that made him glad he had the foresight of investing in gold with his savings. He should check on the briefcase of gold behind his wall again before he went to bed tonight. Better to be safe than sorry. Perhaps he could make another hole in another wall and relocate it. It’d been a while he’d done so.

“What does Heavy know? He is not a man of science. He should go back to his poetry books and leave me to _meine Welt der Experimente_!” Medic ranted, pacing the room. “It must be possible. The invulnerability isn’t working, but the Übercharge is still here. It must be convertible to some other energy! It must work.”

“Yes, so you’ve said.” Spy stifled a yawn. “Because energy cannot disappear. It merely changes form.”

Medic blinked at him and stopped in his pacing. A wide smile spread over his face. “You’ve listened.”

“Of course. May I remind you I’ve memorized and stolen the formula for the Kritzkrieg simply by paying attention?” Spy said. “And yet you’re making the mistake of assisting me in the theft of your work. Again.”

“Ach, details,” Medic said, looking at the time on the cloaking watch that the RED Spy had given up as inexplicably lost many months ago. “What you do with the end products has no effects on my work.”

Medic began disassembling the prototype. He pulled out the two rods that stuck out of the top of the medi-pack, pulled apart the medi-gun, and packed the blender into his briefcase. Roused by the thought that Medic was finally willing to leave for the night, Spy quickened the process by stuffing the documents on the desk into a manila folder.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to continue this experiment on Sunday,” Medic said regretfully. “I won’t be free tomorrow night.”

“Not conducting other traitorous rendezvous with my teammates, I hope,” Spy said.

Medic laughed, and his birds fluttered down onto his shoulders. He closed the clasp on his briefcase. “Nothing so exciting. My teammates are in a good mood after defeating your team for two days in a row. We’ll be having an early Smissmas dinner.”

“Good,” Spy said, steering him to the door. “I’d say I hope to never see you again, but we both know it’s too much to ask for by this point. So, goodbye, and good riddance.”

“On Sunday, we’ll continue our experiment!” Medic declared, before Spy closed the door on him.


	4. Day 3: Crafty Saturday

Crafting

The early morning battle at the first control point was peppered with gunshots, explosions, and insults traded by Soldier and the RED Demoman. But the battle was cut short when it was announced that Engineer was needed to help install the new machine that had arrived on their doorsteps.

The machine came in a large wooden crate with Mann Co.’s logo stamped across the front. It was sitting next to their mailbox on a patch of brown weed, and the delivery truck was long gone. Demoman hoped it was an alcohol still, Scout insisted that it was a pinball machine, and Soldier yelled that it was an anti-Communist-brainwave machine and that it was about time it got here.

“What do ya think, Spy?” Scout said.

“I think you’re all idiots.” Spy tapped his cigarette against the lid of his cigarette case before lighting it.

Engineer shooed them away from the crate and asked Heavy to carry it into the base.

It took Engineer a long hour to put everything together, and most of the team drifted away to attend to their own projects until only Spy and Heavy were left to watch Engineer work.

Apparently, the new machine would make it possible for them to craft weapons from other weapons. One would think Smissmas had come early for Engineer from how enthusiastically he talked about tokens and metals and recipes. It was making Spy’s head hurt, but Heavy was nodding along and seemed intent on understanding the mechanism behind turning scraps of metal into an edible Sandvich.

Spy excused himself and left them to it. It was rare that they had Saturdays off and Spy intended to take full advantage of it. After Scout had bounced a baseball off of his wine cupboard last week and had been made to clean the resulting mess out of his carpets, Spy was looking to restock his supply of red wine.

In the rec room, Soldier was choking Scout on the couch and screaming about the television remote. Spy rolled his eyes at them but was largely ignored. In front of the couch, Pyro was sitting on the floor and clapping enthusiastically at the television.

The television was showing a forest burning in a napalm bombing. Black smoke engulfed the sky. It was an old footage that had been shown on the news a few weeks ago. Pyro must have taped it, and it wasn’t the first time Pyro had done something like that. The other day, Pyro had been playing the footage of a burning man on loop. Who knew how much other footage of human sufferings Pyro had kept?

It was an hour’s drive to the nearest town. The scenery consisted mostly of landscapes carved out of rocks and sand and a few trucks driving ahead of him on the road, so Spy switched on the radio and turned the dial until he found the station that played classical instrumental music.

Spy drove into the little town to find a line of cars forming at the entrance of the mall’s parking lot. Unwilling to wait, Spy drove four blocks before he found a parking space on the streets.

A large fake tree outside the mall was drooping under the weight of dozens of bubbles and Smissmas lights and tinsels. A bored woman in an elf costume was handing out Mann Co. pamphlets by the large glass doors.

The mall was crowded with parents and children. Everywhere he looked were haggard parents dragging crying children behind them and docile children that had been placated by lollipops and ice cream and other briberies. The normality of the scene was a stark contrast against the bloodbath that Spy saw every day, and for a moment he was wondering why no one was blowing up these slow-moving targets. Distracted by a screaming child that had barreled into his leg, Spy didn’t see a loaded shopping cart coming his way until it ran over his foot.

Spy swore; the sharp pain shooting up his leg made his eyes water. The cart did a hit-and-run and disappeared into the crowd. A father came to collect the screaming child, and whisked her away from the angry Frenchman hopping on one foot. The culprit had done a hit-and-run and disappeared into the crowd. Spy tested his weight on his foot. His foot was aching and his dress shoe was marred by a long scruff mark, but it didn’t feel like anything was broken. He hobbled the rest of the way to the liquor store.

“No, siree, we’re all out of stock,” the cashier said.

“I don’t believe this.” Spy stared at the wall of empty shelves behind the checkout counter. The rest of the store was similarly barren; it was as if an alcoholic tornado had blown through the store.

“You’re telling me. I can finally get off work early. Woo.”

“This is a liquor store,” Spy said, frustration seeping into his voice. “How could you not have liquor?”

“Well, we sell other stuff too. We have chewing gums and chocolate bars and condoms.” The cashier pointed at the colorful countertop displays in front of the cash register. “Or do you want some candies?”

“No, I don’t want some fucking candies!”

The cashier peered at him. “Say, are you gonna rob us? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, I have a pretty good memory for faces, and that ski-mask isn’t hiding much.”

Fuming, Spy hobbled out of the store, and spotted the familiar red shirts of the two men walking out of the butcher shop next door. The RED Heavy was carrying a large cut of meat wrapped in brown paper and pointedly ignoring Spy, while the RED Demoman was holding a big bag of bread and glaring daggers at Spy. Spy made an about turn and hobbled in the other direction.

The REDs might be respecting the unspoken rules of ceasefire outside of the battlefields, but Spy would rather not test their patience by staying in their general vicinity for long. He’d come back next week. There were other liquor stores nearby, but none of them sold his preferred brand of wine. The people in this town wouldn’t know good taste if it stabbed them in the face.

“Mmph! Mmmm mmm mmmph!”

Spy flinched.

In front of a Mann Co. store, the RED Pyro was sitting in a shopping cart and jabbering agitatedly, pointing at Spy with a gloved hand. The RED Medic was straining to pull the cart to a stop because the RED Pyro was wriggling violently in it. Shoppers were giving them a wide berth, and a mall cop was whispering into his radio nervously.

“Ah, our mutual friend.” Medic wiped his forehead. “Hello.”

“Mmmm mmmph!” Pyro said from the cart, brandishing a rusted lighter.

“Yes.” Spy had half a mind to pretend he hadn’t noticed them. It was no secret that he hated the abomination with a burning passion and the abomination would chase him to the four corners of the earth if given the chance. Maybe he could make it to the exit before Pyro climbed out of the cart. An adrenaline rush should do nicely to let him ignore the pain in his foot. He had a shot of it sewn into the lining of his sleeve.

“You’re standing very far away.” Medic said. “I can barely hear you. Come closer!”

Spy shot Medic a look that told him how deluded and loud he was being. If they hadn’t been getting stares before, they were now. But the doctor had little social grace to go with his madness and was attracting curious glances with his raised voice, so Spy said testily, “I’d rather not.”

Medic turned and finally noticed the lighter that Pyro was holding. He scolded, “Ach. No fighting in public spaces. Give me the lighter. Or you’re not getting the new gas tank.”

“Mmm!” Pyro said in distress.

Spy hobbled closer to the pair after Pyro handed the lighter to Medic unwillingly. Pyro was clutching the ugliest ragdoll Spy had ever seen; one of its buttoned eyes was missing and its mouth was sewn shut by a jagged line of stitches. Spy kept his distance from the shopping cart, and said, “We can be civil, can’t we?”

“Hmph,” Pyro said, and ripped out a strand of wool from the doll’s head.

“Very good,” Medic said cheerfully, and pocketed the lighter he’d confiscated. “How are you, my friend? I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Annoyed by the idiots that run this town,” Spy said. “You’re doing your Smissmas shopping, I presume?”

“I’m looking for a bone saw,” Medic said. “The teeth on my old one are getting dull.”

“I remember,” Spy said. “Scout had a messy run-in with you last week.”

Medic laughed. “ _Ja_ , it took five cuts to kill him. There was so much blood!”

“Take a look at our products. We’re selling festive weapons for Smissmas.” A pimply-faced teenager in an elf costume held out a couple of Mann Co. pamphlets to them. “Annual Smissmas sales.”

“Oo, I love Smissmas,” Medic said, taking a pamphlet. “It’s when naughty children are punished and have their kidneys removed.”

“Sure thing,” the boy said and handed a Mann Co. pamphlet to a mother hauling a bawling child over her shoulder.

Medic was reading the pamphlet. The pamphlet was advertising the sale of festive weapons, which were wrapped in bright, blinking Smissmas lights. Spy had seen the weapons in the Mann Co. Smissmas catalogue, and he hadn’t been impressed then. Mann Co. had simply repackaged their old, overstocked weapons and attempted to sell them to the gullible Smissmas crowd.

Only idiots would pay for them.

“I think I’ll get this festive bonesaw,” Medic said. “It looks good with the lights on it.”

There was a whiff of burnt cloth in the air. A black plume of smoke was rising from the shopping cart that Pyro was sitting in. Muffled laughter was ringing from behind the thickening smoke. Perhaps Spy had made a grave mistake in thinking that the maniac needed a lighter to start a fire.

Spy had no doubt he knew who Pyro would be burning next after the ragdoll.

“Ahem, yes,” Spy said. “I’ll leave you to your shopping then.”

  


* * *

  


There were half a dozen of crates in the hallway outside Engineer’s room. They weren’t as large as the crate that the crafting machine had come in, but they, too, bore the logo of Mann Co. Pyro was sitting on the floor and peeling small pieces of paper from the shipping labels on the crates, in effect, blocking off the entire hallway.

Spy considered if it was better to squeeze past Pyro or climb into the vents to reach his room. He’d take the vents if his foot wasn’t throbbing like it was a size too big for his shoe. But Pyro looked up when Spy approached, and scooted over to let him pass. Surprised, but too relieved to look a gift horse in the mouth, Spy quickly took the offered path. He didn’t know Pyro was capable of any thoughts other than setting things on fire. Pyro gave him a thumbs-up before returning to the task of peeling off the shipping labels.

The door to Engineer’s room was open. Engineer was drawing on a sheet of paper at his table.

“About time one of you comes around-” Engineer started to say, and stopped when he pushed up his goggles. “Oh, hey, partner. Good to see you survive the Smissmas shopping crowd, partner.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed, laborer,” Spy said.

“Well, I’m hoping Demo and Soldier will take those crates off my hands. Seem to be new weapons that none of us have ever heard of before,” Engineer said. “Can’t walk around a corner without tripping over some fool things from Solly’s war.”

Spy muttered a half-hearted agreement and went to seek ice cubes for his foot. With no insane doctors to intrude on him tonight, he fully intended to settle in for a quiet night.


	5. Day of Rest: All Good Boys Went to Church

Raucous laughter and country music drifted from the RED base late into the night. True to his words, Medic didn’t show up with his briefcase of experimental notes and technology. Spy stayed up late to listen to his old records, and woke up early with an itch for a smoke and a greasy breakfast.

Engineer, like the clockwork machines he worked on in his free time, was up at the ungodly hour and already preparing the day’s breakfast in the kitchen.

Before leaving for his weekly supply run to pick up building materials, Engineer asked Spy to help him carry some tools to the truck. Since no one else was awake in the base, Spy grudgingly took a bag of tools and followed Engineer out the door in his slippers. Streamers were hanging from the branches of dead trees near the road that ran through Dustbowl.

“One heck of a party they had.” Engineer tilted his helmet back to peer up at the shotgun shells topping the tips of tree branches.

“How much longer till we reach your truck?” Spy said, struggling under the weight of the tools.

“It’s behind that shed right there.”

At the truck, Engineer took the bag from Spy and casually mentioned how it’d be good for Spy to go to the gym and test his sapper on the RED sentries down there. The sentries had been collected from the battlefield from all the times that the RED Engineer had been killed while hauling his machines during the battles. Engineer handed Spy a sheet of paper to record the time it’d take his sapper to disassemble the three different levels of sentries.

“Doesn’t hurt to do some maintenance testing once in a while,” Engineer said while loading his truck. “We don’t need equipment shorting out on us in the middle of a fight.”

But Spy had the nagging suspicion that Engineer had sent him down to the gym for more than testing his sapper.

By the time Spy emerged from the sentry gun practice room at the back of the gym, several of his teammates had come to the gym for their own training. A radio had been switched on in the boxing ring, and it was playing a droll Smissmas drama about a child that had lost his cat.

The only people who used the boxing ring for boxing were Heavy and whoever was stupid enough to agree to be his sparring partner, which, after the incident that had taken the team gallons of bleach to clean Sniper’s blood off the wall, seldom happened these days. Lately, Soldier had taken to using the boxing ring to rally his imaginary army friends and to train his pack of rabid raccoons.

Today, though, the ring was devoid of both men and raccoons.

“Open up, Soldier!” Scout was hammering on the door to the shooting range. He was answered by a series of rocket explosions from within the room. “You ain’t the only one who needs to do target practice!”

Next to the boxing ring was a cluster of chairs that had often been occupied by the peanut gallery whenever Heavy had found himself a new boxing partner. Demoman was sitting there, along with a sword propped up in another chair, and he was staring at the sword as if he was in a trance.

Normally, Spy would pass his behavior off as the result of uninhibited drinking and go on his way; he could smell the sharp scent of cheap alcohol on Demoman’s uniform. But the sword had caught Spy’s eye. Demoman had never wielded anything other than a beer bottle on the battlefields. More than a few REDs had been cut down by jagged glass shards in their arteries.

The sword must be one of the new weapons that had arrived in the crates yesterday.

“Best be going on yer way,” Demoman said. “The sword is haunted.”

“You don’t say,” Spy said. Apart from the suspiciously wet blood stains glistening on its blade, the sword didn’t look sinister. The blade was broad and hefty, though, and it would take a strong arm just to lift the sword.

“Aye, I can hear it speaking, plain as day,” Demoman said. “It wants heads.”

“So do most of our colleagues, I’d imagine,” Spy said.

Demoman didn’t so much as look away from the sword. “Nah. It wants heads, heads taken fresh off of living men’s necks.”

“Hey,” Scout said, and shoved at Spy to get a better look at the sword. “Soldier has a new weapon too. No one told me you’d get nice shit for doing this war deal.”

“It ain’t a reward, lad,” Demoman said. “I dunnae know where they found this wretched blade, but it’s filled with more wickedness than the lot of us put together.”

“It’s a beauty, is what it is,” Scout said.

“I would nae say that. See this nick?” Demoman said, pulling down his collar. A long, thin wound ran across the side of his neck. “The bloody sword tried tae kill me last night in me sleep.”

“Yeah, nah. I saw you swinging it when I walked in here. You’re blaming the sword just ‘cause you got shit aim with it.” Scout took the sword and nearly lost his balance from how heavy the weapon was. “I’d show you what a real pro can do.”

“Dunnae say I dinnae warn ye,” Demoman said.

Scout had to use both hands just to hold up the sword. Choosing to use a scorched dummy for his target practice, he parted his legs, held the sword over his shoulder, and set up in a stance more suited for batting baseball. “Okay, here I go.”

“You’ll cut yourself,” Spy said, taking a drag on his cigarette.

“How hard can it be? You hold the sword and whack ‘em with it. Like this!” Scout swung at the training dummy. Scout missed the dummy completely and struck himself in the shoulder with the sword. Blood was gushing out of the wound like water out of a cracked pipe.

“It nearly got yer head, lad,” Demoman said, and yanked the blade out of Scout’s shoulder.

“Oh my God, that freaking hurts!” Scout screamed, as half of his uniform T-shirt turned a dark red.

“It’s an evil bastard.” Demoman put the sword on a chair, and wiped his bloody hands on his shirt. “It’ll want blood as long as there’s a man left standing in this world.”

“Of course,” Spy said drily. “It has nothing to do with little boys trying to play with grown-up toys.”

“Ye dunnae believe me, but ye will see soon enough,” Demoman said grimly. “Aye, ye’ll see.”

“Are you two done talking? I’m dying, man.” Scout was slurring his words. A small puddle of blood was pooling at his feet.

“Do you want to take the imbecile to the doctor?” Spy said.

“Nah, I have tae keep an eye on this one,” Demmoman said, sitting down in a chair from across the sword like he’d done when Spy had found him.

Spy switched his cigarette to his other hand and grabbed Scout’s less bloody arm. “Well, Scout, the doctor should be happy to see you.”

  


* * *

  


Rain was pattering against the windows of the rec room. The men that hadn’t returned yet would have to trudge through the stretch of wet mud surrounding the base.

The television was clouded with static from the rain. The evening newscaster talked about the amendment that was being debated in the Congress. If the amendment was passed, it would cut the funding for military operations in Cambodia. Students were rallying in support of the amendment, while the president stressed, again, that passing the amendment would be detrimental to the war in Southeast Asia.

“I don’t know what the hippies are complaining about,” Soldier said. “What is one more country for America to fight? I’d fight the whole goddamn continent if I have to!”

Spy frowned and shifted his chair away from Soldier, who was standing behind him because Scout had taken up all the space on the couch. It was hard enough to understand what the newscaster was saying through the distorted audio, he didn’t need Soldier’s running commentary.

“Big words for an old geezer that ain’t ever gonna be drafted,” Scout said, cradling his arm sling. He hadn’t stopped whining about it since his visit to the infirmary. According to Scout, he was being punished for something that wasn’t his fault. According to Medic, Scout would be used to help build the Übercharge at the beginning of tomorrow’s battle.

“What did you say, you maple-loving draft dodger?” Soldier said. “Say it again so I can stick this boot up your ass!”

“This is bullshit.” Scout stood up from the couch in a huff and turned to leave the room. “I can’t fight jack squat with my arm in this thing.”

Soldier strutted around the room like he’d won the fight and stopped paying attention to the news, even when it reported the guerrilla attacks that the American troops had been facing and showed a helicopter spraying defoliant over a rice field in Vietnam. It was a wonder there were any plants left to destroy after the amount of defoliant they’d poured over the country.

“There ye are, ye blockhead,” Demoman said with his arms crossed at the door. “Ye running away from me after our nice chat at the gym?”

“I never run from a fight,” Soldier said, straightening his back. “Have your say, maggot.”

Spy turned up the volume on the television. He’d buy a television set for himself if he knew how to set it up to receive signals in his room. Then he’d never have to leave his room and suffer the idiocy of his teammates again.

“The bleeding sword talks tae me,” Demoman said.

“The walls in my room talk to me all the time but you don’t see me complaining about it like an entitled hippie!” Soldier said.

“I wouldn’t have gotten the sword if it wasn’t for yer war,” Demoman glowered at him. “This is yer bloody fault. Call it off.”

“No can do. It’s the duty of all Soldiers to draw Demomen blood in this war,” Soldier said. “I’d kill you myself if you weren’t on my team.”

“Is that a threat or a promise, lad?”

“I could hear you two from the other side of the base.” Engineer opened the door, and glanced between Demoman and Soldier. “What’s the problem, fellas?”

“We have a hippie among our ranks,” Soldier declared. ”I’ll have to beat the flower power out of you, son.”

“I’m no damn hippie,” Demoman said. “But I dunnae want those new weapons and I dunnae want tae fight in yer stupid war!”

“Too late! You can’t give them back. They’re for you to kill Soldiers like me!”

“I’ll kill ye alright!” Demoman grabbed the front of Soldier’s shirt, and Soldier wrapped his hands around Demoman’s neck. They tumbled to the floor and pummeled each other with their fists. The meaty thuds of fists connecting with flesh filled the room. There was a crack, and then a bloody tooth landed on the carpet.

“Enough of this tomfoolery!” Engineer shoved Demoman and Soldier apart. He pulled Soldier up from the floor by his collar and gave him a good shake, and Soldier turned a faint shade of purple in the face.

“Hng,” Soldier croaked, clawing at Engineer’s shirt feebly.

“We’re a team. I won’t have y’all turning on each other, y’hear?” Engineer said.

“Hng,” Soldier croaked again.

“You got something to say, Soldier?” Engineer released his grip on Soldier.

Soldier took a deep breath. “We are Americans. We bleed red, white and blue. And the only thing we know how to do is win wars. I’ll not compromise on that.”

For a long moment, Demoman stared at him with a wide, disbelieving eye. Demoman wore the look of a man who had finally realized a brick wall couldn’t be swayed no matter how many times he bashed his head against it. Tension leaked out of his shoulders. He shook his head and pushed away from Engineer. “I dunnae know what I’ve done tae deserve this.”

The door closed behind Demoman. The only sounds in the room were the low rumbles from the television news and the soft squelches of Soldier poking the new gap in his teeth.

“You might wanna have the doc take a look at that,” Engineer said.

“Yes, sir.” Soldier saluted him, and trotted out of the room. “Medic!”

Engineer sighed. He picked up the broken tooth on the floor, tossed it in a trash can, and sat heavily on the couch. The news was reporting the daily body count in Vietnam. It was a little below the number of times that Soldier had killed the RED Demoman since their private war had started.

“Call me sentimental, but I wish Soldier wouldn’t do this so close to Smissmas,” Engineer said. “He used to be on such good terms with the enemy Demo.”

“All friendships come to an end eventually,” Spy said.

“Still, it’s a darn shame they can’t see fit to be friends anymore,” Engineer said, “and it’s just plain wrong for men to be feuding over the holiday season.”

“If you thought that, then you’re a fool, laborer,” Spy said. “A sentimental fool.”

Engineer cracked a smile. “Well, don’t let me stop you from mincing your words.”

“I’m only stating the obvious,” Spy said. “Wars rarely stop for seasonal greetings to be exchanged. To expect otherwise is foolish.”

It was an uncomfortable truth. He’d learned it and lived with it intimately for most of the last years of his boyhood. There was no sugar-coating it. And yet his mouth felt dry and gritty though he hadn’t done anything more than smoking for the last hour. He took a couple of quick puffs on his cigarette.

Engineer chuckled quietly. “Maybe you ain’t wrong about me being a fool.”

“Oh?”

“I thought the war would end for sure by this Smissmas after that shameful business at My Lai came out, but look at what we get instead,” Engineer stood and clapped Spy on the back. “I oughta turn in for the night. We have a long day ahead of us.”

“Good night,” Spy said.

Spy sat and smoked, finally having the rec room to himself, as the credits rolled for the end of the evening news. And Spy knew what the heavy knot curled up at the bottom of his stomach meant.


	6. Day 4: Ghastly Monday

The Eyelander, and the Chargin’ Targe

Spy woke up, confused and disoriented, in the dark.

For a wild moment, he thought he was still in the back of a theatre where too many people were jostling in the dark. Older children than him had elbowed him in the side of his head even though he’d been standing on his tiptoes. A short German newsreel had been playing, and he’d caught some of the few German phrases that he’d understood, watched German soldiers marching on the screen, and wished the cartoon would just start already.

Old dreams made of older memories.

The sky was dim outside. He’d fallen asleep in his chair in the rec room. The television had been switched off, and the cigarette he’d been smoking was snuffed out in the ash tray on the coffee table though he didn’t remember putting out his cigarette.

Spy’s balaclava was sticking uncomfortably to his face. Seeing he was alone in the rec room, Spy took off his balaclava. His hair was soaked with sweat. He paused when he saw a small pink blanket in his lap; it must have fluttered off his chest when he’d woken up. It was barely large enough to stretch over his chest and it smelled faintly of bird feed.

Spy bundled up the blanket and trudged back to his room. He wished Medic had woken him for their science sessions, so then he wouldn’t have slept in his suit. Spy doubted he’d manage to fall asleep again before breakfast. He had no wish to revisit his dreams again tonihgt. What he needed was a shower and a change of fresh clothes.

  


* * *

  


The team didn’t cap the first control point until an hour after lunch.

Over a hurried meal consisting of cold beans and canned ham in the respawn room, Engineer asked Soldier to temporarily call off his pursuit of the RED Demoman for the sake of the team. The team had been picked off like flies the entire morning. According to Sun Tzu’s theory of the Nine Grounds, the team was on dying ground, which meant everyone had to fight.

“And by that I don’t mean fighting just the RED Demo,” Engineer said. “You gotta help us fight the rest of the doggone REDs too.”

Soldier wasn’t convinced that it was a real theory or that it was from _The Art of War_ , but he conceded readily after Heavy told him that it was fancy Engineer talk and what Sun Tzu actually had said was that they ‘had to fight babies when things were FUBAR’.

Despite Heavy’s more-or-less accurate translation, Engineer didn’t look amused, while Soldier congratulated Heavy on being a well-read man.

The intervention worked. After lunch, instead of hunting his nemesis around the battlefield, Soldier shot a barrage of rockets into the shack that housed the first control point, and forced the RED Engineer to abandon his sentry gun and the RED Heavy to hurry out of the shack to dodge the ricochets from the rocket explosions.

Now the team had to move up before the REDs set up a line of defense at the second control point.

Spy stayed cloaked as he waited on a high ledge near the second control point. A mining tunnel led from the shack and to the ledge. Spy had followed and killed the RED Sniper and Scout when the two REDs had fled into the tunnel. The tunnel was cleared. No one would be sneaking up on Spy from inside the tunnel.

A flash of off-white clothing below the ledge caught Spy’s eye. The RED Heavy and Medic were heading towards the mining tunnels that led back to the first control point.

Spy decloaked. But when Spy jumped down from the ledge and landed behind Medic, Medic started to spin arounds and unhook the bonesaw from his belt. The front of his hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. He must have heard Spy decloak, but he wasn’t moving as fast as Spy knew very well that he could. He was weighed down by the medi-pack on his back and the REDs had lost a lot of their grounds in only an hour. With a practiced hand, Spy slipped his knife above Medic’s medi-pack, and stabbed him between his shoulder blades.

Spy stepped away as Medic slumped to the sand like a sack of rocks. They might have spent many stolen moments in the dark hours of every night, but Spy wasn’t so sentiment as to think there was much point to catching the body of a dead man and laying it to rest. He had bigger fish to fry.

But the RED Heavy was alerted by noises from the scuffle. As the RED Heavy turned around, Spy activated his cloak and ran. Heavy’s minigun was revving up behind him. Spy prayed that Heavy hadn’t seen him, but he was two feet away from Medic’s dead body when bullets caught Spy in the back and tore holes in his suit. Spy bit back a scream as his knees nearly buckled from the pain on his back. Seeing that the ground between him and the nearest health kit was blocked off by a spray of bullets, Spy was forced to make a sharp turn and head for the mining tunnel that led back to the first control point.

Spy was coughing up pink foam as he stumbled down the tunnel. His mouth tasted like rusted iron and air rattled in his throat when he tried to breathe. The bullets had ripped something in his lungs.

There was a full health pack in the shack that housed the first control point. At the door of the shack, Spy ran past Scout, who was standing over the body of the RED Pyro with his baseball bat. The lenses of the RED Pyro’s mask were cracked. Spy coughed up more pink foam when he dropped to his knees next to the health pack.

“You thought I wouldn’t see you trying to flank us?” Scout said. “Guess what? You didn’t even singe me, numbnut!”

Spy tore open the health pack. The pack was filled with medical supplies. Spy emptied a bottle of pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry. He poured sulfur powder over his wounds to stanch the bleeding. The bitterness of the pills nearly made him gag, but blood was no longer bubbling up his throat. 

“There’s good, there’s great, and there’s me,” Scout crowed over the RED Pyro’s body. “I’m on a whole other level!”

“What are you doing?” Spy spat out a mouthful of saliva and blood. His breaths were coming out easier than they had a minute ago. “The REDs are dead except for their Heavy. Get to the second control point before they respawn.”

“Aw, man. Don’t say you didn’t see me. The RED was coming at me and there was fire everywhere, but did I flinch? No, I did not. A shot in the head equals one dead fucker. Bam. Right here.”

“I don’t care.”

“Ain’t everyday a guy kills a mumbling freak four times a row. I’m gonna savor this.”

“Scout,” Spy said shortly, “if their Engineer sets up a level-three sentry again, I’ll kill you myself.”

“Jeeze, fine. I’ll go,” Scout said. “Keep your fancy pants on.”

Scout beat in the RED Pyro’s skull until the body was claimed by respawn and disappeared. Then he ran off in the direction of the second control point. Spy stayed behind to pick up an ammo box to refill his cloak. By the time Spy’s wounds had closed, the front lines had moved up.

Sniper was standing in the shades of the tunnel and squinting through the scope on his rifle. The RED Heavy lay dead in the opening of the tunnel. Hearing Spy’s approach, Sniper looked away from his scope and eyed Spy suspiciously.

Engineer was huffing as he ran past Spy and up a flight of stairs in the tunnel with a toolbox on his shoulder. There was a good spot for a sentry gun on a bridge that hung above the opening of the tunnel. The spot overlooked the control point, and the RED team would come within its firing range if they tried to defend the point.

“Gentlemen,” Spy said.

Sniper grunted and turned back to his scope.

“Shouldn’t take more than a coupla minutes for us to be done here,” Engineer called from the bridge. “Nice of ya to join us at the end of the battle, Spy.”

“I try.”

Up ahead, Scout was reloading his scattergun next to the RED Soldier’s body. There wasn’t much left of the RED Soldier’s face; it looked like Scout had emptied a round of buck shots into it.

Spy pulled out his disguise kit, and disguised himself as his team’s Pyro. He tugged the paper mask over his face. While there might not be anyone left for him to backstab, the least he could do was to help capture the point and end the battle early today.

Scout jumped over the RED Soldier’s dead body and made a beeline for the second control point.

And, without any warning, the RED Demoman charged out from behind a corner and slammed bodily into Scout.

It was like watching a car crash, and Spy couldn’t look away from the wreckage.

Scout made a wet, thick noise in his throat, and looked down at his own chest, which was impaled on a spike on a shield. Then the RED Demoman raised his sword and chopped off Scout’s head.

The sword looked no different from the sword that Demoman and Soldier had been arguing over last night. The blade and hilt were dripping with more blood than Scout could have bled. The RED team’s employer must have given them the same weapons as the ones that Demoman and Soldier had received in the mail from the BLU team’s employer.

It was no secret that Mann Co. had no qualms about supplying weapons to anyone and everyone that could afford them. The two teams had always been evenly matched in the Gravel War.

The RED Demoman turned to look at the tunnel where Spy and Sniper were standing, and his eyepatch was burning with a green flame. He almost seemed… possessed.

The sentry gun above the mouth of the tunnel beeped. Demoman darted out of its sight. Bullets buried into the dirt where he’d been standing seconds ago.

“What the bloody hell was that?” Sniper exclaimed.

And all Spy could think of was a word from Demoman’s tirade yesterday. “It is haunted.”

“It is bloody what?”

“You one-eyed Judas!” Soldier showed up on the ledge that Spy had been standing on ten minutes ago. He shot rockets at the corner where the RED Demoman had disappeared to. A grenade soared through the air and exploded on Soldier’s chest. Soldier screamed and jumped down from the ledge to chase after the RED Demoman. “Fight me like a man!”

“Hoo, boy,” Engineer breathed out from behind his sentry gun. “Now I’ve seen everything.”

Scout’s headless body was stretched out on the sand where the RED Demoman had dropped him. The sand was turning sticky with the blood spurting out of his neck. Spy remembered the green fire in the RED Demoman’s missing eye, and a shiver that had nothing to do with the dry desert chill crawled up his spine.

 _“It’ll want blood as long as there’s a man left standing in this world.”_ Demoman had said.

Spy didn’t want to think what other unnatural things that his employer had invited onto the battlefield for the sake of Soldier’s war.

  


* * *

  


The tiled floor in Spy’s ensuite bathroom was covered by a tarp. One of Medic’s birds was in the sink and snoozing in the pink blanket that Spy had returned to Medic.

Spy was sitting in his bathtub. His shirt was open and the skin on his chest was hanging loosely from a Y-incision. The bottom of the tub was slick with his blood, and his pants stuck wetly to the back of his thighs.

Dinner had only been two hours ago, but the ashtray balanced on the side of the bathtub at his elbow was half-full with cigarette buds and ashes.

He would need to put in a requisition for cigarettes by the end of the week if he kept going at this rate, but smoking helped burnt away the restlessness in his stomach. Spy had thought he’d seen the back of it when he’d moved from the cold, wet hellhole that was London to take up the contract with his current employer. The restlessness had burnt low in his gut; it’d kept him up at night and made him strain his ears for sounds more ominous than the raccoons digging through the dumpster under the window of his hostel room.

Considering the troubles that were brewing in Northern Ireland at the moment, he’d made the right choice in leaving.

But, now, he wasn’t so sure he should have come to America.

“You’re quiet,” Medic said. He was leaning over the side of the tub and elbows deep in Spy’s chest. His breath smelled like vinegar and cucumbers. He’d been eating his vile stash of pickled food again.

“Unlike Scout, I know when to shut up,” Spy said. Medic’s medi-gun was a heavy weight in his lap. It had been set to the lowest setting and was healing him just enough to keep him from bleeding out. “I would hate to spend the night lying dead in my own bathtub.”

“Talk to me about anything you like,” Medic said. “I have performed this procedure so many times I can do it in my sleep.”

“How reassuring.”

Medic wormed his forearm deeper into Spy’s chest until the inside of his elbow was pressed against the bottom of Spy’s sternum. The steady drip of blood from Spy’s exposed ribs was the only sound in the bathroom. When Spy didn’t say anything fill in the space between them, Medic hummed. “Have I told you about my father’s experiments?”

“For far too many times.” Spy leaned his head against the lip of his bath tub. He breathed out the smoke in his mouth and lifted the paper mask on his face to switch out the cigarette stub he’d been smoking.

“They always yelled at him from the pantry when he was cooking.” Medic laughed. “I learnt so many cuss words.”

How long had Spy been working for BLU? Two years. Maybe three. It was strange how quickly he’d gotten used to the strict nine-to-five schedule that they adhered to out here in the desert. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a job that had had lunch breaks.

It was almost respectable.

But he’d been here for too long. Staying in one place didn’t sit well with him, especially when he could taste troubles on the wind.

If push came to shove, if the wars escalated, he’d leave before his contract with BLU had ended.

“Ah,” Medic breathed. “Here we go. We’ll finally know if it is the Über devices that are making the medi-gun prototype malfunction.”

Spy couldn’t see or feel much of what was happening in his chest, but he coughed when Medic gave his heart a sharp tug and knocked into the sides of his lungs. Slowly, with the care of a man handling expensive glassware, Medic eased his heart out from behind his ribs, and pulled it loose with a wet pop.

The Über device was attached to his heart by a mess of wires. His heart was still beating in Medic’s hand. Idly, Spy wondered why his chest was aching from heartburn when he didn’t have a heart, but then he remembered heartburn had more to do with indigestion than hearts being set on fire.

“Spy, your heart is stopping.”

He breathed shallowly; it was getting hard for him to draw smoke from the cigarette in his mouth. His head was as heavy as an anvil and his arms and legs might as well be made of lead, but it only exacerbated the restlessness vibrating in his gut like a disturbed hive of wasps. His employer might have paid him well, but most men had something that couldn’t be bought with money and Spy was no exception. No amount of cash could make him stay on a sinking ship He was the rat that fled at the first drop of water leaking through the hull.

“Can you hear me?” Medic said. His face was swimming in and out of focus above Spy. “Ach, this useless medi-gun prototype is not working.”

He never stayed around for the bitter end, because he knew from experience that things could get very bitter indeed.


	7. Day 5: Surly Tuesday

The Direct Hit

When Spy opened his eyes, he was lying on the floor of the respawn room.

The ceiling was growing bright with early sunlight. The coolness of the floor tiles seeped through the back of Spy’s suit. Faintly, through the walls of the respawn room, the clock in the kitchen was sounding the last of six chimes for the start of the morning.

Spy got to his feet unsteadily. His head was throbbing like he’d stayed up for too many nights and his legs were stiff with soreness that he associated with running in short busts from a persistent enemy. His empty stomach churned unhappily after having spent hours dormant in his dead body. Spy had to lean against a wall and clench his jaw so he wouldn’t gag on his stomach acid.

As Spy spat out the sour saliva in his mouth, his mind was filled with violent ways he could kill Medic when he saw him again.

He had wasted an entire evening because Medic couldn’t keep him alive for a little experiment. In between the battles and the company of his frustrating teammates, Spy had little time to himself as it was. He might not have planned to do anything last night but he’d intended to get in a good night’s sleep to forget his troubled thoughts before Medic had ruined his night. Fuming, Spy stalked out of the respawn room. He would have to kill Medic later.

Now, he needed food to settle his stomach.

The volume of the morning news had been turned up in the kitchen, which was strange, when they only had a television set in the rec room. Engineer was sitting at the kitchen table, but he wasn’t reading his usual morning papers. Instead, his eyes were glued to the television set that had been moved from the rec room to the kitchen.

There was a noticeable lack of cooked food at the stove.

“Y’all gonna have to get yourselves cereal today,” Engineer said. “I haven’t got the time to cook. Something just came up on the news.”

Something stiff coiled in Spy’s throat. The old, half-formed memories and not-unfounded fears that had been dredged up in the last two days resurfaced again. Spy wasn’t a superstitious man, but he was, if nothing else, an animal of instinct. Over the years he’d spent in his line of work, he’d learnt to trust his gut, and his gut was wound tighter than a snare drum.

“Which is what, exactly?” Spy said. His voice sounded oddly pitched to his ears, but Engineer, still watching the news, didn’t seem to have noticed.

“The Soviets landed a probe on Venus and got data transmitted back to Earth before it broke down.” Engineer shook his head and laughed. “Dagnabbit, they beat us to it.”

Spy let out a breath that he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Of course Engineer would find such news interesting enough to disrupt their breakfast routine. “Is that all?”

“Only the best damn news I’ve heard this year,” Engineer said.

Spy fished out a bowl from the soapy water in the sink. There was a slight tremor in his hand, but he shook it away. Leftover adrenaline. “I thought we’re done with this fascination with space after last year’s moon landing.”

“There’s more to this universe than the moon, partner. We’ve barely scratched the surface,” Engineer said. “There are stars and planets and galaxies out there that we haven’t dreamed of, let alone seen.”

Spy scoffed.

“Hell, there’s more to this universe than you,” Engineer said.

“I haven’t noticed,” Spy said, spooning cornflakes into his bowl.

“Who would’ve guessed?” Engineer chuckled and turned back to the television, where the news anchor was talking about the data transmission that the Soviets had received from their probe on Venus. Spy picked up the newspapers that Engineer had discarded. Engineer always hogged the papers and it was rare that Spy had a chance to read them. He mostly got his news from the radio. He scanned the newspapers for news on the wars, and realized that he was surrounded by them all: The Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the Soldier-Demoman War. They sat grudgingly in the loud headlines and brooded in the neat squares of paragraphs.

They were not unlike the terse words used in the intelligence reports from Eastern Europe that had passed through his hands when he’d been in England. The tension might have died down compared to what it had been a handful of years ago, but perhaps it was a mistake to think that he’d escaped his old fears by travelling across half the world to the other side of the ocean.

The chewed cornflakes lay heavy on his tongue and settled uneasily in his stomach.

  


* * *

  


Spy had made it as far as the RED respawn room when he’d been backstabbed by the RED Spy. It’d been a quick, humiliating death. One moment he’d been decloaking outside the respawn room, then the next thing he’d known had been the cold slide of a knife into his back. He hadn’t even heard the RED Spy decloak behind him.

It’d done nothing for his foul mood.

Spy got out of the respawn room and stepped onto the teleporter entrance spinning outside the door. There was a brief moment of absolute silence when the whirring of the machine faded from his ears and his body was disintegrated before it was scattered across half of the second stage of Dustbowl to be reassembled on the other end of the teleporter.

The blue light in his eyes dimmed as the teleporter exit under his feet stopped spinning.

Spy was standing outside an old office block next to the first control point that his team had captured hours ago. In front of him were the entrances to the tunnels that led to the second point. Stickybombs lined the walls of the tunnels. A level-two sentry gun was standing guard at the entrances and Engineer was busy hammering at the gun.

“Fire in the hole!” Demoman yelled, lobbing grenades into the tunnels. Panicked shouts echoed out of the tunnels as the grenades bounced off the rocky floor and exploded.

Not in the mood to deal out social pleasantries, Spy stepped off the teleported exit without so much as a greeting.

Engineer whirred around and punched him in the ribs. It wasn’t hard enough to bruise, but it knocked Spy into the doorway of the office block behind him. As Engineer advanced on him with a wrench raised over his head, Spy took out his knife and swung it at thin air. Engineer backed off of him.

“I’m not the RED Spy, no,” Spy said dourly.

“Can’t be too careful.” Engineer hit the sentry gun with his wrench. The joints of the sentry gun creaked and a rocket turret unfolded from the top of it.

“Why aren’t you building your nest closer to the control point?” Spy said. “Can’t you move it into the tunnels?”

“Nah, the REDs are cleaning out the tunnels,” Demoman said. He pulled out a round of grenades from a nearby dispenser and reloaded his grenade launcher. “Ye know how narrow it is in there. It is tough for anyone tae dodge the bullets bouncing off of the walls.”

“Had my buildings destroyed twice already,” Engineer said. “By this point, I’m just hoping to keep them from pushing us all back to our respawn room.”

The sentry gun beeped and fired two shots into the tunnel on the left. The RED Pyro made a muffled noise and ducked back down the tunnel.

Asides from the occasional footsteps shuffling through the tunnels, it was quiet at the tunnel entrances. There were no men huddling around the dispenser and pulling arrows out of their backsides. There were no inane conversations. There were no stupid plans being hatched to infiltrate the REDs’ defenses.

There was no one.

“Where is the rest of our team?” Spy said.

“Dead as me old grandmum,” Demoman said. “There is a sentry gun on the other end of the tunnels where the REDs are roaming like a pack of rabid wolves. I could nae for me life reach it with me stickies. It musta been set up on somewhere high.”

“We figure there is no one better suited to taking it out than you, Spy,” Engineer said.

“Me.”

“Yeah. Give us a holler when you’re done with it, will ya?” Engineer said, refilling his sentry gun with ammo. “I’ll move things up after y’all done securing that end.”

“Fine,” Spy said shortly and activated his cloak. “I’ll call you.”

The tunnel he chose split into two forks after a few feet. Spy took the right fork, which led to a one-way gate that could only be opened from inside the tunnel. On the other side of the gate, was a small building facing the second control point. The building was often used by his team to clear out the defenses set up around the point; it was also why the RED Engineer liked to put his sentry gun on a ledge above the tunnel exits, where it’d have a direct line of sight to the one-way gate and stop anyone from entering the building.

Spy peeked out of the gate. As he’d thought, a sentry gun was placed on the ledge above the tunnel exits. Scout and Pyro were lying dead under it. The RED Engineer was nowhere to be seen, but the RED Soldier was patrolling the ledge with a new rocket launcher on his shoulder. The rocket launcher was outfitted with a scope, not unlike the one that Sniper had mounted on his rifle. It looked exactly like the rocket launcher that Soldier had carried out of the respawn room this morning.

Spy didn’t know what the new rocket launcher could do, but he knew it wouldn’t save the RED Soldier from getting backstabbed. The American was unaware at best and oblivious till the end.

Cloaked, Spy stepped through the gate. The gate closed behind him with a sharp clang.

“Spy!” the RED Soldier yelled. He turned his rocket launcher in Spy’s direction, and opened fire.

The end of the rocket flared with a burst of flames and a rocket was fired at Spy. The rocket was going too fast; it was faster than the rockets that Spy had gotten used to dodging. Spy froze in its trajectory, holding down the cloak button of his wristwatch in a futile attempt to cheat death, like a child crouching in a truck’s headlights. He felt the white-hot moment when the rocket hit him in the chest and crushed his ribs, before the rocket exploded and smeared his remains across the gate behind him.

  


* * *

  


Dinner was eaten in relative silence. Most of the team retired to their room after leaving their dirty plates in the sink. The long stalemate at the second control point had worn all of them out.

It’d taken two wasted Übercharges and a can of Bonk! to take out the RED’s defenses. The RED Engineer had been determined to keep his buildings standing, and had the RED Pyro guard his buildings. Spy hadn’t succeeded in sapping anything because he’d been lit on fire every time he’d gone near the buildings. The RED Pyro had airblasted Medic away from Heavy when they’d pushed towards the control point with an Übercharge, making them lose the charge. Scout had died half a dozen times taking potshots at the RED team before Spy had strong-armed him into using Bonk! to run circles around the sentry gun, so Heavy could flank the sentry gun and destroy it.

After their victory, on the walk back to their base, Scout wouldn’t stop yapping about how he should have gotten credit for being a meat shield for the team and he could totally do Heavy’s job if Heavy died, to which Soldier had answered that he himself was the better man to do Heavy’s job because his rocket launchers were heavy weapons in every definition of the term. Heavy had been largely unperturbed by their increasingly loud squabbling. Spy had left them behind and gone ahead to return to the base alone when Engineer had started shouting for Pyro to airblast Soldier away from Scout.

Soldier was the last man left sitting at the kitchen table with his congealing bowl of chicken soup, watching reruns of _Gomer Pyle USMC_ on the television set that hadn’t been returned to the rec room. Spy left him to it and returned to his smoking room. For a show about the US marines, it mentioned very little of the ongoing war.

On the radio, two senators were arguing about the evils of communism, the validity of the domino theory, and the necessity of the war in Asia. The discussion was going nowhere that hadn’t been covered laboriously by smarter and dumber men than them on the news, and now they were talking less about the spread of communism and more about how un-American the other man was.

“Do you have a headache?” Medic said, tinkering with the barrel of the medi-gun prototype. “I’ve acquired a rhinoceros brain lately. If you want, I can replace your occipital lobe. There is a chance your brain won’t reject it.”

Spy stopped once he realized he was rubbing his temple. ”It’s nothing sleep won’t fix.”

“Another time then,” Medic said.

For a man that Spy had last seen running towards Engineer’s sentry gun to kill himself during the humiliation round, Medic looked unaffected. He was bustling at Spy’s desk, which had been covered by a tarp. The tarp was littered with pieces of duct tapes and wirings. Outside of the tarp, Medic’s doves were pecking at the carpet.

Spy was waiting for him to mention the incident last night, but Medic hadn’t spoken a word about it. The only sign that anything had happened last night was the disassembled medi-gun prototype on Spy’s desk, in which Spy didn’t seen the point since Medic had decided months ago that the malfunction didn’t lie with the mechanism of the prototype itself.

Medic hadn’t apologized for ruining his night yesterday, and, as Spy glared at him over his folded hands, was far too immersed in his failure of a science fair project to be apologizing any time soon.

“Is it so hard to ask that you look at me when you speak?” Spy said.

“Not at all. You have a very proportional face, my friend.” Medic pulled out a pair of pliers from his briefcase. “Is something bothering you?”

Spy knew what was bothering himself.

He’d lived through a world war at a precarious age. Despite what the movies had insisted, it hadn’t felt like living in a grand struggle between good and evil to him at the time. It’d been about trying to live on the little food they could get for their paper coupons, and to go to school and hoped a bomb wouldn’t be dropped on him in the middle of a class. At school, he’d seen hunger on his schoolmates’ faces and his teachers’ faces. Everyone had hated the farmer’s son because they’d known he hadn’t had to be hungry.

He was bothered because he was tired of feeling like a mad man tormented by ghosts that no one but he could remember, like the mythical Cassandra and her visions. He didn’t understand how people around him could act as if everything was normal when their world was crumbling around their ears.

He couldn’t be the only one who saw what was coming and dreaded it.

“Tell me,” Spy said. “What do you think of the war?”

“Hm?” Medic said distractedly, connecting two differently-colored wires. “It’s good to have a purpose in life. Even if it’s just to kill the same man several times every day.”

“Is that so?” Spy said, thinning his lips into an unimpressed line. “But no, I’m not referring to Soldier’s quarrel with your Demoman.”

“Well, it’s good for keeping young men busy,” Medic said. “Or old men. Or any men. Have I told you about the funny man who always drank outside my door in the middle of the night?”

He had. Because he repeated his stories _ad nauseum_. Stories about the experiments he’d done. Stories about the experiments he’d seen. Never stories about himself. For as much as Medic liked filling in the silence in between stretches of experiment, Spy knew nothing about him that was volunteered by Medic himself.

A man would do anything for a decent conversation out here in the desert, but all Spy had heard today was mind-numbing stupidity.

“Do you think I don’t know why you hoard those pickled food in your laboratory?” Spy said.

Medic stopped fiddling with his wires. Finally, he looked up from his medi-gun prototype and at Spy peered over his glasses. “What?”

“The war. The second one,” Spy said. “Surely you must have some opinions about it.”

“I don’t have any opinion about it,” Medic said.

“Please. Don’t insult me,” Spy said. “There was no shame in admitting that Germany has starved too. It’s happened to most of us, except for the Americans. It created hoarding habits that are hard to shake, didn’t it? What I don’t understand is why you care so little about the wars we’re having. You know better than most what a war means.”

Medic crossed his arms and his shoulders formed stubborn lines under his lab coat. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“It has nothing to do with anything,” Spy said. “But if we can’t have a simple conversation, we might as well stop wasting our time in this room pretending to be civil to each other.”

“ _Ja_ ,” Medic said, packing his medi-gun prototype and notes and tools. Once he’d squeezed in his roll of duct tape, he slammed his briefcase shut with more force than necessary. Roused by the noises, his birds flew from their perches to ride on his shoulders. Medic met Spy’s gaze, but there was an unhappy twist to his mouth. “I can see we’re not getting anywhere with the experiment tonight. I’ll leave.”

“Good,” Spy said.

He savored the sadistic joy of watching the door click close behind Medic. It didn’t feel as satisfactory as he’d thought it’d be, but he contented himself with the fact that he’d ruined the evening for Medic, just as Medic had ruined his evening last night.

Misery, after all, loved company.


	8. Day 6: Hairy Wednesday

The Equalizer, the Buff Banner, and the Scottish Resistance

Engineer called a meeting two hours before breakfast. Spy was woken rudely from his fitful sleep, and his teammates showed up in the kitchen in various stages of undress and wakefulness.

“We’ve reached the third and final stage of Dustbowl, fellas. Let’s cap this stage before the end of today,” Engineer said. “Then we’ll get the next week off and have ourselves a real early Smissmas.”

“Affirmative,” Soldier said in his boxers and combat boots. “We’ll kick their ass so hard they’ll have to crawl back home for Smissmas!”

“Mmmm mmm!” Pyro said.

“Merry Australian Smissmas to that,” Sniper said, cleaning his sunglasses on his wool pajama pants. “What’s our game plan?”

The third stage of Dustbowl was easier to defend than it was to attack. Unlike in the previous stages, the respawn room was inside a small building with low ceilings and cramped stairwells. The team would have to fight through the narrow hallways and out of the building to capture the first control point. After that, they would have to make it through a winding alleyway to reach the second control point.

As they waited for the battle to begin, Spy cloaked and hid in a corner next to one of the gates, while Engineer was setting up a level-three sentry gun. The sentry gun wouldn’t stay up for long after the battle started, but the team had agreed in the morning meeting that the sentry gun would at least wear down some of the REDs’ health and ammo. Scout was taunting the RED team on the other side of the gates. With his medi-gun trained on Heavy, Medic was inching towards the stairs that led back down to their respawn room, ready to make a tactical retreat once the REDs popped their Übercharge.

“Are you ready, doctor?” Heavy said.

“ _Jawohl_ ,” Medic said.

The bell for the start of the battle rang.

“Here goes nothing,” Engineer said, pulling out his shotgun.

The gates sprang open. The REDs fired their weapons into the building. There was little space for maneuver. Bullets and explosives bounced off the walls. The sentry gun opened fire rapidly. Spy was sprayed with pieces of shrapnel as he stayed cloaked in his corner. He didn’t move even when the RED Medic brushed past him and Übercharged the RED Soldier to take down both the sentry gun and Engineer. The REDs were moving into the building and mowing down his teammates in the hallways, forcing them to retreat. Spy waited as the REDs moved past him into the hallways. As the REDs disappeared down the stairs to the respawn room, Spy decloaked and followed them.

Heavy and Medic broke out of the respawn room with an Übercharge. At the door of the respawn room, Soldier pulled out his new bugle, which he’d gotten from their employer for his war with the RED Demoman.

A long horn echoed down the hallways.

Heavy laughed as his minigun glowed with the same blue light that was illuminating the weapons of everyone on the team. It was like a Kritzkrieg Übercharge; their weapons were buffed to deal increased damage. The REDs were falling like dominoes. The RED Pyro and RED Soldier ran towards Medic, trying to blast him away from Heavy and leaving their own backs wide open.

It was almost too easy.

Spy stabbed the RED Soldier in the back, and killed the RED Pyro when the abomination looked around at the sound of Soldier’s choked gurgle. As Spy pulled his knife out of the RED Pyro, a grenade hit him in the shoulder and blew him up into bits.

  


* * *

  


By the time Spy respawned, the hallways were clear of REDs. There were no dismembered limbs or splatters of blood. There were nothing left of the bloodbath that had happened. An inactivated teleporter entrance lay at the door of the respawn room, slowly unfolding itself from its toolbox.

Spy paused at the feet of a stairwell when he heard rapid footsteps on the floor above him. After a moment, Medic ran down the stairs towards him.

“Move back,” Medic said, gesturing wildly with the syringe gun in his hands. The front of his lab coat was smeared with blood. “They’re dead. They’re all dead!”

Spy drew his knife out of his pocket. The doctors on the teams were always at the front lines of battles healing their teammates. They had little reasons to be wandering around alone on grounds that the team had already captured. On the other hand, the RED Spy had every reason to be straying in the hallways down here.

“What’s up, doc?” Scout said, jogging out of the respawn room.

“There were so many stickybombs!” Medic exclaimed, and ran into the respawn room.

Hm. So maybe he wasn’t the RED Spy.

“What’s that about?” Scout said.

“I suspect we’ll find out soon,” Spy said, tucking his knife into his suit jacket.

The first control point was glowing in blue. His team had captured the point when he’d been dead. The only signs that the REDs had attempted to defend the point were the pools of blood on the stairs of the control point. A trail of shotgun shells dotted the ground from the control point to the winding alleyway next to it. The REDs had given up and retreated to the second control point.

Much like the hallways, the alleyway was narrow. There were two corners from behind which either team could ambush their enemies. It was only when Spy reached the first corner that he saw what Medic had been screaming about.

The corner was covered in stickybombs. On the floor lay a dismembered gloved hand that belonged to Pyro. Engineer’s helmet rested on a nearby ledge. Pieces of Heavy and Soldier were scattered across the alleyway.

A stickybomb exploded next to Scout’s feet. Scout yelped and bumped into Spy. Spy pushed him off of him.

“I hear ye,” the RED Demoman said from around the corner.

Scout pulled out his pistol and shot at a cluster of stickybombs on the walls. The stickybombs disintegrated into little pieces. But then two stickybombs shot out from around the corner and replaced the destroyed stickybombs.

“Too scared tae come and face me, ye pussyfooting weasels?” the RED Demoman said.

Scout raised his pistol at the new stickies. “Yeah, real funny. Two can play this game, pal.”

“Stop it,” Spy hissed. “Look.”

“I know. There are a bunch of stickies that are gonna blow us up if we try to walk over them,” Scout said.

“No. These stickies are different from his usual ones,” Spy said, keeping his voice low so the RED Demoman wouldn’t hear him. He nodded at the stickybombs carpeting the floor and the walls. “The others didn’t explode when he detonated that first one to scare you. He no longer has to detonate them all at the same time. And there are far too many of them.”

“So?”

“So, you’re wasting time,” Spy said. “I’ll kill him and render his stickies useless.”

“And I’m supposed to just stand here and wait for you to kill him?” Scout said.

“Yes,” Spy said.

He activated his cloak and ducked into a door to his right. The door took him to a tunnel that came out at the control point. A level-three sentry gun was sitting on a ledge next to the control point. The RED Engineer was staying near the sentry gun and keeping watch over it. The RED Scout was nursing his wounds at a dispenser and the RED Sniper was aiming his rifle at the opening of the alleyway. The rest of the REDs must have died when defending the first control point. Spy sneaked past the sentry gun and reentered the alleyway.

Around a corner, a few feet away, the RED Demoman was standing with his back to Spy.

“Why don’t you come over here and tell that to my face, tough guy?” Scout said.

The ground behind and in front of the RED Demoman was covered with stickybombs. Demoman had surrounded himself with a minefield of stickybombs, save for the small strip of land where he was standing. What was more, he’d hidden a cluster of stickybomb hidden at the foot of the corner. Anyone that came around the corner wouldn’t see it until it was too late.

Spy crept towards Demoman, taking care to only step in the gaps between the stickybombs. He was very aware of the stickytraps at his feet. It wouldn’t save him if the bombs were to detonate under his feet at this moment, but he had to make sure he wouldn’t alert Demoman to his presence.

“Nah, I’ll win just by standing here till yer time runs out,” Demoman said. “Bet yer team is regretting sending a lad to do a man’s job now!”

“Yeah, joke’s on you. ‘Cause I’m gonna beat your freaking brains out!”

And then Spy could hear it: Light footsteps running towards the corner and heading straight for the stickybombs hidden there. Because Scout was a child that never listened. Because Scout was too impatient to wait for the extra minute that Spy would need to backstab Demoman.

Spy didn’t know why he even bothered anymore.

But he decloaked and shouted, “Scout!”

Demoman flinched at the sudden sound. The stickybombs at the corner detonated. The explosion sent a spray of sand into the air. Demoman rounded on Spy with a hard glint in his eye. He raised the detonator in his hand. “I hate bloody BLUs!”

Spy braced for the stickybombs to explode under him.

A loud thud rang through the alleyway. Demoman slumped to the ground and his stickybombs disintegrated harmlessly.

“Oh man,” Scout said, wiping blood from his baseball bat. “Soldier is gonna kill me. He’s called dibs on killing the RED Demo. Said he needs all the kills he can get before the end of his war.”

“Can’t help it now.” Spy lit a cigarette. His hand was shaking. “Soldier will just have to kill you later.”

  


* * *

  


Through the open windows of the rec room, the chorus to _Happy Smissmas_ wafted into the quiet desert night. The respawn system was humming from somewhere deep inside the base, as it continued to operate in low power mode for the night.

Spy sat on the edge of the rooftop, not far from the pile of unopened Mann Co. crates that were stacked next to the side of the base. The night air was chilly on his cheeks. He would have covered his face with something thicker than his balaclava if he didn’t have to smoke.

He’d come up here after hearing the announcement that a nuclear test had taken place today in the Nevada Test Site. The smoking room had been too stuffy for him, and the common areas had been occupied by his teammates celebrating today’s victory. Perhaps the many victories and defeats that the team had had over the years had numbed him, but he didn’t feel any urge to share in the festivities. He just needed to get away for a little while.

The control points that his team had captured over the last three days were gray pinpricks in the New Mexico desert. Farmhouses and barns dotted the sand. A thin ribbon of a road passed by the base and through Dustbowl, before it curled around a mountain range in the distance.

Spy took a long drag on this cigarette. Smoke filled his mouth and spread through his lungs. Slowly, he breathed it out of his nose. He could taste the smoke entering through his mouth and leaving through his nose, and watch it dissipate like blood in the sewers.

He was breathing. He was alive.

A quiet tap on his shoulder alerted him to the arrival of someone else on the rooftop. 

“I’m beginning to think you’ve planted a tracking device in my head,” Spy said.

“Hardly.” Medic sat down next to him. The doctor was still in his RED uniform, but there was something amiss about him. It took Spy a while to realize it was because Medic didn’t have his birds with him. “I could see the smoke here all the way from our base, but I’m fairly certain your base doesn’t have a chimney.”

“You exaggerate.” Spy pulled out his cigarette case, but Medic shook his head.

“I’ll prefer if I just have a few puffs. Otherwise I won’t be able to sleep tonight,” Medic said.

“By all means,” Spy said. He handed Medic the cigarette he was smoking, but it’d been put out by the wind when he’d been talking to Medic. Spy flipped open his lighter and lit it again. The light from the flame lengthened the shadows on Medic’s face. Medic put the cigarette to his mouth, and his eyes were tired and faded behind his glasses.

Medic leaned back and breathed out a small cloud of smoke. “You were right.”

“I often am,” Spy said. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

Medic huffed in laughter. “You wanted to know about the war, _ja_? You were right. I was not, as you said, unaffected.”

“Hm,” Spy said. Despite his outburst, he hadn’t expected to get anything out of Medic after kicking him out of his room last night. But Medic was volunteering new information, which happened once in a blue moon or moments of extreme drunkenness, so Spy stayed quiet and let him continue.

“I had no wish to be punished for being a citizen of a country that had lost the war, but there was no stopping the expulsion,” Medic said, sighing through the cigarette in his mouth. “It was like a humiliation round. A very long one.”

“Yes,” Spy said. He’d only given away his cigarette for a minute and he was already wishing for it back. “It was harsh on everyone.”

“Understatement, my friend.” Medic pulled a face. “There were starving people everywhere. I don’t know why anyone calls it a good war. It was many things, but it certainly wasn’t good.

And, Spy, once again, remembered the farmer’s son.

As a boy, Spy had had some acquaintances at school. They hadn’t been his friends; they’d just skipped stones together at a pond behind a chapel. He’d made them wait in the washroom while he’d talked the farmer’s son into coming with him with promises of showing him a dirty photograph. By the time they’d finished with the farmer’s son, he’d had black eyes and a chipped tooth. They hadn’t gotten any food out of the beating, not that they’d expected any. They’d given him a beating because they could, because they’d wanted to make him as miserable as they’d been.

After the war had ended, he’d been there at parades. He’d heard the speeches on the radio. He’d seen the Tricolors that hung from windows and balconies. But when he’d walked past the rubble of his old school on his way to his home, it hadn’t felt like anyone had won at all.

The war hadn’t felt like a fight between good and evil, it’d felt like a monster that had brought the worst out of everyone.

“I prefer this war we’re having here in the gravel pits,” Medic said. “The worst thing we can do is kill each other, and we don’t even stay dead for long. We can do this forever.”

“How fortunate for us.”

“And we get paid for it too,” Medic said. “Heh. Well, unless a war breaks out here in America. Then most of us will probably be dead.”

“Considering the wars it is currently engaged in, that may be happening sooner than later,” Spy said, looking out at the desert. The old knot had returned to his stomach, making it feel tight and small like he’d eaten a cold plate of grease for dinner. “Then we can deal with air raids and food rations while killing each other over gravel pits. Wonderful.”

“Well, no. This country is flanked by oceans. It’ll be impossible for enemies to get enough soldiers and supplies on land to feed a war for long. And I don’t think an army will be marching through Canada any time soon.”

Spy hoped his words were not as bitter as his thoughts. “I see. So we won’t have to deal with air raids and food rations while killing over gravel pits.”

“That’s not what I said. This is a different continent. A different kind of war,” Medic said brightly. “If a war happens, I imagine it’ll be in the form of a mutual nuclear destruction.”

Spy heaved a heavy sigh. He was wishing for a smoke now more than ever. He’d come up to the rooftop to find reprieve from his worries, but none of this was easing his mind. “You don’t sound disturbed by the notion of a nuclear apocalypse.”

“Heh. As long as I can do my experiments now, it doesn’t matter,” Medic said with a feverish grin. The end of the cigarette in his hand burnt like a small, orange star in the dark. “My achievements will survive the end of the world if I can raise the dead and make gods out of men. I’ll decide who lives and who dies. I’ll shape the world in my image!”

Spy wondered idly if Medic had a space in that apocalyptic world for him, but he didn’t say it aloud. He didn’t think he’d like the answer. Especially not after everything that they’d been through. They’d worked too hard to find a compromise that suited them both, and a man would do anything to find conversations out here in the desert.

“Don’t worry about it too much, my friend,” Medic handed Spy back his cigarette. Medic pressed two kisses on his cheek, and Spy turned his face slightly to meet the third kiss. For a man with sharp eyes and a sharper smile, Medic had a surprisingly soft mouth. “It’s nearly Smissmas after all.”

Spy smoked his cigarette again once Medic had climbed down from the roof and headed back to his base. He could taste Medic on the filter.

Maybe he was too stuck on the idea of wars that went on for years while countries roasted slowly in a hell of their own making. He had to get on with the times. If a war arrived on these shores, there would be no battles that dragged on for years. No guns and planes and tanks and warships. Cities would be flattened into nuclear wastelands within minutes of a declaration of war.

In its own way, it’d be a sweet relief.

But as Spy sat on the rooftop and smoked his cigarette, his thoughts drifted again to the long, drawn out wars that still made the news every day, and frowned. Despite what Medic had promised about a nuclear apocalypse, wars were still fought by pitting men against men. There were faster planes and crueler weapons than before, but the song sounded very much the same.

The clock in the kitchen struck twelve. The chimes sounded shrill in the desert night. They marked the final day of the war between Soldier and the RED Demoman.

At least this war had an end in sight.


	9. Day 7: Victory Thursday

The morning mail and newspapers arrived with a crate from Mann Co.

The kitchen was packed. Spy had to squeeze past Heavy to take the wobbly chair in the corner of the kitchen because there had been no other chair left. Even the men who normally didn’t show up for breakfast were present. The television, which had still not been returned to the rec room, was showing the morning news. There was little conversation at the kitchen tables, asides from the occasional complaints of jogged elbows and threats of bodily harm. Murmurs died down when Engineer carried the crate into the kitchen with the mail tucked under his arm.

“Looks like the results for Soldier’s war are out,” Engineer said, putting down the crate and unfolding the newspapers in his hands. He whistled. “Woo. That’s an impressive kill count you fellas have racked up, I’ll give you that.”

“Aye,” Demoman said. “I cannae speak for the RED Demo, but I know I’ve killed that bloody RED Soldier enough tae win this war a dozen times over.”

“You may be good, but you underestimate the power of truth, justice, and the American way,” Soldier said from across the table. “I always win every war I’m in. That’s just fact.”

Demoman scowled at him. “We’ll see, won’t we?” 

“Well,” Engineer said, reading his newspapers. “Says here the Soldiers on the two teams have killed the Demos more times than the other way round. ‘Soldiers Awarded with New Weapon for Victory’.”

Demoman groaned and laid his forehead on the table top.

“I knew it!” Soldier laughed. “That crate is mine!”

Pyro left a wet kitchen towel on Demoman’s head. Demoman hadn’t lifted his head from the table since then, but the rest of the team was too distracted to console him. Soldier heaved the crate onto the kitchen table. Spy sat up straighter and plucked his cigarette from his mouth. Medic had scooted to the edge of his chair and Heavy was leaning his elbows on the table. This was the secret weapon for which a seven-day war had been fought. This was the secret weapon that might finally uneven the playing field that they’d been fighting on since the beginning of the Gravel War.

Soldier pried open the crate, and pulled out-

“A pair of freaking boots?” Scout exclaimed. “Are you kidding me?”

“And now that Judas will never get to wear these boots!” Soldier said. “Which are obviously very deadly weapons although I don’t know why!”

“Bloody typical,” Sniper grumbled.

“No other things in box?” Heavy said doubtfully.

A thorough search of the crate turned up nothing but a sales invoice for the boots. The team watched as Soldier put on his new boots. Spy was almost expecting the boots to explode and kill everyone in the kitchen when Soldier laced his boots, but nothing happened. Soldier marched the length of the kitchen. The metal soles of his new boots clicked on the wooden floorboards with every step he took.

He reached the fridge without an incident; he didn’t even trip over his own feet.

“Next time, we stop him before he starts war with someone,” Heavy said.

“‘Fraid we’ll have as much luck doing it as we did this time,” Engineer said. “Old dogs and new tricks and all that.”

Seeing that no one would be dying any time soon, Medic declared it a huge disappointment and shuffled out of the kitchen in his pajamas to return to bed. Pyro had already disappeared along with the boots that Soldier had discarded by the door. Sniper slung his rifle over his back and left through the back door to presumably shoot desert rats or whatever it was that he ate for breakfast. At the table, Heavy roused Demoman to invite him to his room to share a consolation bottle of vodka.

“ _La première fois comme tragédie, la seconde fois comme farce_ ,” Spy mused. “But I doubt we’ll be laughing when the time comes.”

“What’s that, Spy? You talking in riddles or something?” Scout said.

“It’s nothing,” Spy said. He put out his cigarette between his fingers and stood from his seat. “Just an old man speaking to himself.”

“Since when did you do the self-deprecation crap?” Scout said. “You’re holding out on me, ain’t ya?”

“What are you talking about?” Spy said.

The news had caught Soldier’s attention. He stormed over to the television in his new boots, and shouted at the protestors on the news like they could hear him. Engineer held him back from punching the television, where a bespectacled student was carrying a cardboard sign calling for American troops to be withdrawn from Vietnam.

“That’s what I was asking you!” Scout said. “Before you started going full-on evasive like it was dodgeball. What gives? You never give up a chance to nag me.”

Spy picked up his cigarette butt and slid it into his cigarette case. “I don’t nag.”

“Yeah, you do. All the freaking time. But you know what? It ain’t always bad advices,” Scout said. “You just like to keep them to yourself till the last minute, so you can swoop in and turn the tide and be a smug jerk about it.”

“More like no one wishes to listen ntil they’re out of options. Still, you flatter me,” Spy said, brushing ashes off his gloves. “Who are you and what have you done with Scout?”

“C’mon, man. I’m listening, ain’t I?” Scout said. “ _La première fois_ something. That’s what you said, right?”

Spy managed not to wince at the words that Scout had mangled beyond recognition. By all rights, Spy should turn his back on Scout and leave so he’d be rid of his annoying chatter, but the sincerity in Scout’s voice stopped him. “You want to listen? To me?”

“What? You think I’m too stupid for your lecturing? I don’t get good at baseball by not listening to coaches, y’know,” Scout said. “So say what you gotta say, Spy. Give it to me straight. I’m all ears.”

Spy didn’t say a word. Not until he sorted through the verbiage that Scout had thrown at him and realized what Scout was telling him. Then an unbidden tremble crossed his lips, the wrinkles at the corners of his mouth deepened, and, for the first time, he found himself smiling at the boy not out of spite or malice, but out of something that would bring tears to his eyes if he let it.

“Who knows, you may learn yet, Scout.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **  
> **  
> Timeline:  
>   
> 
> -According to the WAR! update pages, the official event began on a 10 December that fell on a Thursday, which is also why this fic is set in 1970.
> 
> -The USSR successfully landed a probe on another planet (Venus) for the first time in human history on 15 December 1970.
> 
> -A number of nuclear tests have been performed in the Nevada Test Site. Several of them took place on 16, 17, and 18 December 1970.
> 
> -After months of debate, the Cooper-Church Amendment was passed by the U.S. Congress on 22 December 1970. It was the first time that the Congress restricted funding for military operations during a war, therefore putting pressure on the president to end the war.
> 
>  
> 
> **  
> **  
> Historical Notes:  
>   
> 
> The first living-room war.
> 
> In 1970, a year after the My Lai Massacre came into light, Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia. Protests erupted in campuses across America. Four students died in a protest against the Cambodian Campaign during the Kent State Shootings. It took three more years before America withdrew its troops from Vietnam. After which, the war between North and South Vietnam continued until the Fall of Saigon in 1975.
> 
> William Calley, who instigated the My Lai Massacre, only served three and a half years of house arrest before he was pardoned by Nixon. Hugh Thompson, who stopped some of the killings by threatening to shoot his fellow soldiers, was sent numerous death threats by the public. No other persons involved in the massacre were convicted.
> 
> Today, [up to 6.6 million hectares of land in Laos](http://ncronline.org/news/global/deadly-unexploded-ordnance-become-poor-people-s-livelihood) are contaminated with unexploded ordnance (UXO) dropped by American and allied military forces, [about 300 people are killed or wounded by UXO](http://www.nra.gov.la/uxoproblem.html) in Laos each year, and [children are still being born with birth defects caused by Agent Orange](http://www.news.com.au/world/asia/vietnams-horrific-legacy-the-children-of-agent-orange/news-story/c008ff36ee3e840b005405a55e21a3e1).
> 
> Despite the fact that Vietnam War has ended 40 years ago.
> 
>  
> 
> **  
> **  
> An Afterthought:  
>   
> 
> Of course, America has learned from the Vietnam War and taken steps to make sure an anti-war movement of that scale won’t ever happen again.
> 
> Journalists’ access to warzones is restricted and their coverage of wars is often censored (or self-censored). Graphic war footage and photographs, which were seen on television and in magazines during the Vietnam War, are a rare sight these days.
> 
> The anti-war sentiment from the Vietnam War era has all but disappeared. In its place is a culture of military worship, which conveniently shuts down conversations about military decisions when people are busy congratulating their soldiers for being heroes but ignoring questions about the morality of sending soldiers to these wars.
> 
> ( _American Sniper_ , anyone?)
> 
> War is hell, and it is one lesson that the world will keep learning over and over and over again, which is a somber note to end this on.


End file.
